From last time:
“I think I want to give it a try. I can’t be a reporter anymore. At least not now. Maybe in a few years, I’ll be able to go back to it, being at the Planet will at least keep that possibility open. And no more stakeouts means more time with Jon.”
He’d given this a great deal of thought, she could tell. “It sounds like your mind is made up,” she said at last.
“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t want to do this unless you want to, too.”
She drew her fingers up and down the length of his arm, over the hard curve of muscle and soft skin. A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Have you talked to Dr. Friskin about this?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She thought it was a good idea – at least, going to work part time. She doesn’t think I’m ready for two full time jobs yet, and she’s probably right. But she seemed to think that some semblance of a routine, being a gainfully employed, respectable adult again would probably be good for me. What do you think?”
She tried to hide her hesitance. So much had changed in just the last few weeks, but maybe if they took this slowly, making concrete progress back toward normal life would help him. “I think we should talk to your parents. And Perry,” she said.
New stuff:
“Perry, we’re taking a heck of a risk on your boy,” Walter muttered as he walked the paper’s editor-in-chief through the lobby toward the elevator. Sitting several floors above the newsroom, the well-appointed offices and corridors of the executive suites could only be identified as belonging to a news corporation—as opposed to a bank or law firm—because the walls were decorated with framed copies of the paper’s most famous and storied front pages from over two hundred years of history. Here, the men in expensive suits fretted over financial concerns that those in the bullpen, convinced they were doing “God’s Work” as part of the Fourth Estate couldn’t have been bothered with. Up here, journalism was a business, not a calling. As the paper’s general counsel, Walter was much happier when Perry was in his world and the ‘suits’ as Perry not so secretly referred to the board members, were in theirs.
Perry guffawed, taking offense, as Walter knew he would. “Clark Kent is a damn fine reporter – one of the best journalists who’s ever worked for this paper. He’s been loyal to the Planet and he deserves its loyalty in return.”
“The board isn’t going to undermine you, or second guess your decision, but you have to know that we’re concerned.” Walter attempted to smooth the editor’s obviously ruffled feathers. “Kent has no experience as an editor. He’s got, what, a few months to learn the ropes and take over for the paper’s number two man? And he wants to start part time?”
“I make the personnel decisions on my staff,” the other man replied obstinately. “I had it written into my contract.”
“We know that, Perry…”
“And I’m as right about this as I was when I hired that young reporter… you remember the one, barely twenty one and busting her tail to get her masters while working as a night research assistant here. The one with the shelves’ full of awards, who’s broken damn near every big story of the last ten years, and might I add, has made this paper buckets of money.”
Walter smiled as Perry turned smug. “And the board’s afraid that this is a favor to that reporter.”
Perry’s smirk turned into a scowl. “This has nothing to do with Lois. Clark’s earned this. He’s the only reporter I’ve had here who could ever give Lois a run for her money. I know what it takes to be a good editor, and the boy’s got it in spades.”
“We’re all hoping you’re right,” Walter replied. “We’re on the same team, here.”
Perry stared at him and jabbed the elevator call button. “Yeah, well, why don’t you go back to worrying about the bottom line and I’ll get back to running the paper.”
Walter held up his hands in defeat. He’d been asked by the board to voice its concerns to the editor and as far as he was concerned, he’d done his job.
********
Clark held Jon’s hand as the three of them walked down Bessolo Boulevard toward the Daily Planet. Jon was fascinated by the towering skyscrapers that loomed over them. Even in the cold of winter, the streets were packed with residents and tourists alike. Bessolo had once been an old Indian trail that cut across the long island of Metropolis at a diagonal, from the northwest corner to the southeast one. Once paved a hundred years ago, it instantly became the city’s main thoroughfare, but in more recent decades, it’s largest source of traffic headaches. At some point while he’d been gone, large sections of it around the city’s main squares had been blocked off to vehicular traffic, creating immense pedestrian plazas.
All the people walking through the streets—stopping to take pictures or hurrying off to a big meeting—captivated Jon’s attention. Clark couldn’t imagine what it was like for a little boy about to turn four, trying to take in everything that Metropolis had to offer with his wide brown eyes. He himself had been twenty-seven when he first arrived in the city, by way of five other continents, dozens of countries and major cities and absolutely nothing had compared to Metropolis.
Sam and Ellen were meeting them just a few blocks from the Planet to take Jon to the children’s museum while he and Lois had a chance to talk to Perry and later, begin the first phases of house hunting. He was still trying to convince himself that they were ready to do this—that this was the best way for them to make progress. They needed to get back to something resembling normalcy. He longed to feel productive, needed. Metropolis had never failed to make him feel both.
“Look, Daddy!” Jon exclaimed as he pointed with his little index finger to a giant television screen over the LNN headquarters building. On the screen was footage from Superman’s dramatic intervention in a high speed chase the previous afternoon. Clark picked Jon up in his arms to let his son get a better look as they watched Superman safely stop the car and pull the fleeing suspect out before he or anyone else could get hurt. Out of the corner of his eye, Clark could see Lois smiling at them.
“Daddy, Superman caught the bad guy,” Jon announced.
“Yes, he did,” Clark agreed.
Jon frowned slightly as he continued to watch the superhero’s exploits. “Does Superman live in Metropolis?”
Clark blinked, momentarily unsure what to say. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “He helps here a lot, but I don’t know if he lives here or if he flies somewhere else when he’s done helping.”
“Maybe he lives on the moon,” Jon said.
Clark smiled. “Maybe,” he concurred.
Clark kept carrying Jon in his arms as they walked the half block remaining to the coffee shop where they were going to meet his in-laws. He was thankful that Sam and Ellen were capable of being civil around each other for Jon’s sake. He figured they were both so anxious to spend time with their grandson that they managed to behave like grownups. His mother and father-in-law were already waiting for them when they arrived at the coffee shop. They exchanged hellos and Ellen and Sam both exclaimed at how big Jon had gotten since the last time they saw him a few months ago and asked him what he wanted for his rapidly approaching fourth birthday.
Extracting a promise from their son to be good, Clark and Lois left for their meeting with Perry. Clark had already started hammering out the details of the jobs with his old editor, but as they tried to fumble for the contours of what his work relationship with his wife would entail, it quickly became clear that Lois’s input was necessary.
His wife slipped her hand into his as they made the familiar walk toward the Planet. His thoughts couldn’t help but drift toward the days and months when this had been their routine. They would talk about wedding plans and stop for coffee on their way to the office, Lois getting all the more worked up as the big day approached. Truth be told, he, too, had been beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by the insane level of detail involved, but he’d managed to keep his cool. Besides, if he’d started to stress out over it, he wouldn’t have had any fun watching his soon-to-be-wife going about a million miles an hour as she tried to nail down every variable and detail—as though she’d been planning some giant military operation, instead of just a wedding. Of course, it was every horrible, villainous attempt to thwart their first wedding that lead to her almost paranoid level of planning. Who else but them had to worry about evil sociopaths trying to break up their happy day?
Juxtaposing that time with the present made him feel like he was in some sort of mid-century absurdist play. He shook his head. Their lives had to be lived in order to be believed. As they approached the building, Clark let go of his wife’s hand and followed her through the revolving doors. They waited for the elevator in the lobby and he couldn’t help but think that this was it. A conscious step forward. Time to be an ordinary guy with a job again.
As they gathered in the editor’s office, he could still hear the whispers of the Planet’s reporting staff from the bullpen. The consensus in the gossip world was that Clark Kent was definitely returning to the paper, but they still didn’t know in what capacity. Rumors that the Lane and Kent investigating team was about to be reassembled had started to swirl. How he wished that were the case. But in the real world, not the world of water cooler gossip and speculation, it just wasn’t possible. Both of them had too high a profile now to work as serious investigators.
If it were only a question of being a world famous reporter, he could have switched to covering the national political or security beats, but the problem wasn’t that he was renowned for his work, it was that he himself had been one of the biggest stories of the last year, despite his own attempts to keep a low profile. Staying out of the limelight and being a top reporter on a national beat were mutually exclusive and he wasn’t about to let his personal and professional lives get mashed up and mixed together into some sort of twisted and dysfunctional puree.
“Son, I sure am looking forward to officially welcoming you back to the Planet, so let’s get this stuff squared away,” Perry drawled as he sat on the corner of his desk, facing what was once his top reporting team. “I don’t give a damn about appearance of nepotism issues; there’s no question that you two are the best in the business. But I think you need to really need to think about how this new arrangement is going to affect your relationship. You two are dynamite as a team, but I don’t need to tell you that the relationship between an editor and a reporter is very different.”
“That’s why I don’t want Lois reporting to me,” Clark said definitively. Still, he glanced at his wife sitting in the chair beside his out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge her reaction. Her face gave nothing away.
“I think that’s wise,” Perry replied. “If and when you take over for Mike Burns, Lois will officially report to me. But that still leaves the editorial board. Day to day control of the board is in the hands of the managing editor. As a senior columnist, Lois sits on that board and I think it would be bad for the paper’s integrity for me to go about interjecting myself into the day to day affairs of the editorial board whenever you two disagree.”
“Perry…” Lois began.
Perry cut her off. “Don’t try to tell me you won’t disagree about the paper’s editorial positions. Half the reason you two are such a great team is that you have no problem fighting it out when you disagree.” Would that his editor knew the half of it, Clark thought ruefully.
“But we have at least six months before Mike retires, which means you have six months to figure this out. Until then, Clark will be an assistant managing editor for the A Section and you two will be equal members of the editorial board, free to fight like cats and dogs if that’s what suits you. For the sake of peace in my newsroom, I hope you keep it civil.”
“Perry,” Lois began impatiently. “Clark and I worked together before. Remember? You took out billboards? The ones that made it impossible for us to go undercover until the damn things came down?”
“You’re right, darlin’,” Perry replied. “I’m just worried because this won’t be a partnership, at least not the way you remembered it. I don’t want this change ruining your working relationship. Or worse.”
“We take your point. I’ll admit it would be strange to work for Clark. Or for him to work for me. But with neither one of us supervising the other, I think we can avoid those problems.”
“I agree,” Clark added. “I don’t want to be Lois’s boss. But we’re professionals, chief. We’re not going to turn your newsroom into a three ring circus.”
“You can relax, Perry, this is a good thing,” Lois assured her editor.
Perry grinned. “I know. I just…I’m nervous,” he admitted uncharacteristically. “Having you back, son—having both of you back in this newsroom—makes me happier than a hundred previously unreleased songs from the King would.”
Clark laughed and glanced at his wife, who smilingly shook her head. The longer he spent in this office, with the familiar din of the bullpen in the background, the easier it was tell himself that this was a good thing. The familiarity of the Planet – it felt like home. And he could see the way it energized Lois just to be in this building, close to the tangible parts—the bricks and mortar and printing presses—of the paper she loved.
“So now we get down to the brass tacks and talk about a start date,” Perry said.
“We still need to find a place,” Lois replied.
“The Planet will cover your moving expenses, including rent in the city until you find someplace you like,” Perry assured them. Clark wondered silently at the concession and what Perry had had to do to wrangle it out of the board.
“We need a little bit of time to figure this out,” Clark said. Suddenly returning to the Planet became concrete to him. It wasn’t just a wish any more. They really needed to start planning and Perry wasn’t leaving months of house hunting as viable excuse for dragging this out.
“Of course. Why don’t we talk in a few days?” Perry replied.
“Okay, chief,” Clark responded.
All three stood up and Perry extended his hand to Clark. “Welcome back to the Planet, son,” he said.
Clark shook his once and future boss’s hand and followed his wife back into the bullpen. He placed his hand on the small of her back, a gesture meant to reassure himself as much as her. They were greeted immediately by Jimmy who bounded over with a grin to meet them. He may have been older and more mature than he was when Clark left, but he was still Jimmy.
“That meeting had better have been about who gets better office space,” Jimmy said with a grin.
“Shhh, Jimmy,” Lois chastised him quietly. “We aren’t quite ready to announce our return just yet.”
“My lips are sealed,” Jimmy replied, holding his hands up apologetically. He turned to Clark. “Now when do I get to spend some time with the little man so you can finally take your wife on a real date?”
Clark smiled at his thoughtful young friend. “How’s tomorrow night sound?”
“Great, I’ll take him to the movies and out for pizza– don’t worry Lois, strictly G-rated fare.”
“Oh, can you take him to see that dog movie? I’ve really been dreading having to see it,” Lois replied with a grateful sigh.
“Sure thing,” Jimmy replied. They said their goodbyes and slipped out of the bullpen with a few waves to their colleagues, eager to avoid having to stay and answer questions about their plans. There would be time for that soon enough.
Once outside the Planet, Clark checked his watch. “What time are we supposed to meet the realtor?” he asked.
“We have almost an hour,” Lois replied.
“A whole hour to ourselves, huh?” he asked. Suddenly a silent alarm from a bank halfway across town caught their attention.
“You had to go and jinx it, didn’t you?” his wife asked him ruefully.
Instinctively, he started for his tie, but hesitated. Was she expecting to keep taking the lead on things like this? Were they going to work out a schedule? Or a grid?
“You can handle this,” she assured him. He gave her a quick appreciative kiss before ducking into an alley. Superman was back, after all.
He took off and quickly located the source of the alarm – the First Mercantile Bank of Metropolis. Clark could tell from the first scan that this was an amateur job –two gunmen, one facing the hostages, the other grabbing money from the cash drawers. But they were in direct line of sight from the door and so close together that he would have no problem disarming both of them before either knew what had happened. Not waiting for a good situation to potentially deteriorate, he burst through the doors, depriving both robbers of their weapons and the free use of their hands before they could react. With the two perpetrators bound and their guns destroyed, he began frog marching them out of the bank. Their former hostages slowly rose to their feet. One of the banks employees started to applaud. The others joined her. Soon everyone was loudly clapping and cheering for him.
“Welcome back, Superman!” one man yelled out.
“Thanks, Superman!” several others called.
He tried to contain his smile. This is why he’d gotten into the cape and tights business in the first place. Outside, the Metropolis PD was happy to relieve him of his charges. A couple of officers read the robbers their rights and replaced the extension cords he’d used to bind them with proper handcuffs. The police hadn’t even had time to establish a perimeter before he’d defused the situation and a crowd had started to form.
“Way to go, Superman.” He looked up at the sound of her voice and found his wife in the crowd, smiling at him.
“Thanks, Ms. Lane,” he replied. The crowd seemed to turn as one to look at the woman the Man of Steel was talking to.
“Do you have a quote for the Daily Planet?” she shouted.
“It’s good to be back,” he said with a smile. With that, he took off, ostensibly to go wherever the caped hero was needed. In reality, he landed in a nearby alley and changed back into his regular clothes. As the crowd started to dissolve, Lois found him.
She took his hand as they started to walk. “You missed all the excitement,” she teased.
“I usually do,” he said with a wink.
“Were you calling for help, or returning a video?”
“Have I used the Cheese of the Month excuse yet?”
“Oh yeah,” she replied. “It didn’t go over very well, as I recall.”
“Yeah, that was a bad one.” He pulled her closer and let his hand slip from hers so he could drape his arm around her shoulders. Clark smiled to himself. Happy. Content. At peace.
********
“What about the one on the Upper West Side?” she called out from the bathroom as she put her earrings in.
“The high-rise?” he shouted back.
“No, the brownstone,” she replied. She walked into the bedroom to find her husband straightening his tie. The apartment was quiet – after much pleading and cajoling, they’d given Jon permission to spend not just the day but the night at his Uncle Jimmy’s. She’d been somewhat surprised by Clark’s desire to stay in Metropolis for their night out. Obviously, they could have gone anywhere in the world just as easily, but it was starting to get clearer and clearer to her how much he loved this city. Unlike her, he would always consider himself a farm kid at heart, but Metropolis really was like nowhere else and living here – whether for a few years or a lifetime—seemed to spoil you for anywhere else. He’d surprised her with tickets to the jazz orchestra at Washington Center, but how he’d gotten such good seats on such short notice remained a mystery.
“It was all right,” he replied at last.
“But not great?” she ventured.
He did up the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt and put on his watch. “The house was fine. But with no yard and that far from the park…”
“I know,” she agreed. “Jon should have somewhere he can play outside. I asked Robert to show us a few places in Parkside Hill.” His reaction, which he did an admirable job of covering up, let her know he wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of more house hunting tomorrow. It wasn’t as though they had much choice. A house wasn’t going to find itself.
He turned to pick up his jacket from where it lay across the bed. “We should get going,” he said as he pulled on his suit jacket. "Our reservation is for six thirty.”
Clark started to turn toward the living room, but paused for a moment and turned to look at her appreciatively. He smiled as he held his hand out to her and pulled her close to him. He kissed her cheek. “You look amazing,” he said.
Lois smiled in response. “So do you,” she said. She was finally starting to get used to his subdued ties. Yes, she missed her husband’s peculiar sense of whimsy, but she knew this sartorial change was the last thing she should concern herself with. She could keep cataloguing all the things that were different about him, or she could be grateful that he was—in every way that mattered—still the man she loved.
He pulled their overcoats out of the hall closet and helped her into hers. After two days of what seemed like trying to plan their entire future, she was looking forward to a quiet evening with her shockingly gorgeous and wonderful husband even more than she had expected. Hand in hand, they left the apartment.
********
“How are you, Clark?” Dr. Friskin greeted him warmly.
“Great, thanks,” he replied, realizing he was about as upbeat as he could remember being.
“You seem to be in excellent spirits,” his therapist commented.
He sat down on the couch as Dr. Friskin took her place in her wingback chair. “I think being in Metropolis has made me remember how much I want to go back to the Planet. I’ve had a few really good rescues, too.”
Dr. Friskin nodded and looked down at her notepad. “I hope you’re still easing into things.”
“I am,” he assured her. “Just a few patrols a day. Lois is still tackling the really big problems.”
“That’s good,” his therapist said as she continued taking notes. “Steady progress is our goal. What about your other profession?”
“We talked to Perry about my coming back to the Planet as an editor, starting on a part time basis. I still don’t know if editing is what I want to do, but I want to be back at the Planet. I want to be a journalist. If this is the best way for me to do that, then I’ll start as an editor.”
“That seems like a very smart approach,” Dr. Friskin said as she looked up from her notes. “But it’s a big change from the way you’ve been thinking in the past. What do you think brought about this change?”
He thought over her question for a long moment. “A week or so ago, when I first talked to you about going back to work, I’d taken Jon out sledding. He got angry when it was time to come home and he started to sulk. I beat myself up about it, because I usually do. I was thinking about it on the way here. And I realized, I actually have a pretty good relationship with my son. We read bedtime stories together. We build snowmen. We play with dinosaurs. So what if he was grumpy one afternoon because it was getting too cold to stay outside? It was like a light going off in my head. I was letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Not everything is going to be perfect with a four year old. How could it be? But Jon’s a good kid. He knows I love him. And yeah, I’m still figuring things out, but I’m not a bad father.
“I realized I’d been doing the same thing in everything else in my life. I can’t go back to my dream job. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a good one. Not every rescue goes perfectly, but Superman can do a lot to help people. I have to stop making perfection my goal. I can’t do it. Figuring that out has been liberating.”
Dr. Friskin took off her glasses. “Clark, it’s wonderful to hear you say that.”
********
Both of them woke at the first wail of the siren. He looked up, momentarily disoriented. Hearing a siren out here in Smallville in the middle of the night was practically unheard of. It took a second to get his bearings and to realize they were in Metropolis. Lois was already getting up. She touched his shoulder. “I’ll take care of it,” she whispered. She leaned over to kiss him before standing up and spinning into the suit. In a blur, she was gone, leaving the curtains to rustle in her wake.
He stared up at the ceiling for a long moment before turning to look at the pillow beside him, where his wife had lain just moments before. Her side of the bed was still warm. He looked through the wall to see that Jon was still sleeping peacefully in the living room. ‘Everything is fine,’ he told himself. ‘Go back to sleep.’ Closing his eyes, he tried to will himself to fall back to sleep. But for a long time, sleep eluded him. He wondered what was keeping his wife so long.
Eventually, he drifted off. But his sleep didn’t remain peaceful for long. He found himself running in the North Housing Compound of the main colony on New Krypton. The scorched, acrid stench of laser rifle fire rose up behind him. He could hear his boots echoing loudly on the metal floor.
He couldn’t remember which way to go; which of the twists and turns would get him out of the rat maze. He didn’t even know who was chasing him, but he wasn’t about to try to figure that out. Clark thought he was putting distance between himself and his pursuer. The other set of footfalls seemed to fade in the background. He made a sharp right turn. A dead end greeted him at the end of the hall.
Dammit.
He turned on his heel to find Nor standing in front of him. Out of instinct, he raised his weapon and fired. He watched the shot hit Nor in the gut, but the other man didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, he gave Clark a feral grin as he raised his hands from the wound in his stomach.
“You didn’t think you could rid yourself of me that easily, did you?” Nor demanded with a hollow laugh.
Clark heard a gasp behind him and quickly turned around. Lois was standing there, her face ashen, her features settled in a look of shock. He dropped the weapon in his hand with a loud clatter.
He sat bolt upright with a start, his heart still beating the wild, uneven rhythm of a hunted animal’s. He drew in a deep lungful of air. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lois stepping into the bedroom from the balcony.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she apologized.
“It’s fine,” he said, feeling his chest rise and fall with each heavy, labored breath.
She spun back out of the suit and rejoined him in the bed. “Is everything all right?” she asked softly.
“Yeah,” he replied halfheartedly, trying to push the images from his dream out of his mind. “How’d everything go?”
“Warehouse fire,” she replied as she curled up next to him. “No one was hurt.”
He put his arm around her and pulled her closer. “Good,” he said distractedly.
Clark could still hear his heart thundering in his ears. His wife lifted her head from his chest. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. Apparently she could still hear and feel it, too.
“It was just a dream,” he assured her as he pressed his lips to her forehead. If only he knew how to convince himself of that fact. “Let’s go back to sleep.”
